Weber teacher is honored as state's best

Joan S. Heap is at the top of her class.

The North Ogden Junior High language arts teacher was named the 2006 Utah Teacher of the Year at a Friday night banquet honoring 21 educators deemed the best in their field by their local school districts.

The honor comes with $1,000, a computer and other prizes including a trip to Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala. Heap also will represent the Beehive State in the National Teacher of the Year competition in Washington, D.C., where she will meet President Bush.

Heap accepted the award with humor, shock and humility.

"I feel absolutely overwhelmed," she said. "There isn't really a teacher of the year. We are all a combination of all the great teachers we have worked with."

She said her next official act will be going back to school Monday morning.

Runners-up for the honor are: Glen Duane Westbroek, who teaches science at Orem Junior High; and Shelly Condie, a fifth-grade teacher at Emerson Elementary in Salt Lake City.

They each received a cash prize as well as gifts including a Waterford crystal vase and educational software which all local teachers of the year also received.

Heap has taught 13 years, six of them at North Ogden. She also has taught at Rocky Mountain Junior High in West Haven and Wahlquist Junior High in Ogden.

The Weber State University alumna is noted for innovative teaching. She is said to not only challenge students to learn, but help them every step of the way.

"She has truly changed the course of students' lives because of her caring attitude," North Ogden counselors Teri Spiers and Kristy Haws wrote of Heap.

"We know of one young man who entered her class last year reading at a fourth-grade level. He refused to be in the special education classes and so we put him with Joan, knowing that she would take good care of him. Several months later, we learned that this student was meeting with Joan several nights a week after school for some one-on-one tutoring and that his reading improved by several levels."

District and school bosses praise Heap's unwavering, high expectations for students.

"Every time I sat in on Mrs. Heap's class, there was something new, innovative and challenging to help kids learn," wrote Reid Newey, Weber District career and technical education director. "All of her students understand that when they enter the doorway of Mrs. Heap's classroom, they have no choice but to learn; and they enjoy doing it."

But Mrs. Heap said she doesn't see herself as being an extraordinary teacher.

"Just to put things in perspective, on the way over here I was telling my husband that a mother today requested her daughter be moved out of my class," she said.